Imagine a world without money?

Limited resources and asking someone to do a job that they hate doing takes money. Also almost everyone still wants to compete be a powerful billionaire.

Money is not just a store of wealth, it is a means of exchange. How do you get what you need without money? Can you barter your way to get all you need? And I am not talking cars and iPads, I mean, how do you get a loaf of bread and peanut butter? You think I am going to give that to you for hauling away my trash? Wait, how will you get gas?

Remember, money is not evil; the love of money is the root of all evil.

And without money to make things efficient, things would be more violent than more peaceful. And what old days without money are you thinking of? Prehistoric Egypt?

With out money we would have leaves….: P

I would love to see us get rid of money and simply use computerized credit/debit cards for all our dealings. We are practically already there.

You’re such a dreamer and I love it.

@YARNLADY, that’s not getting rid of money. That’s getting rid of the kind of tokens we currently use in favor of another kind of tokens, just as we did when we introduced paper money in place of coins, checks in place of cash, credit cards in place of checks, and EFT in place of credit. Assuming that electronically stored value hasn’t all been hacked and siphoned and vaporized away, that does nothing to alter the accumulation of wealth by some and the impoverishment of others.

@Jeruba There will always be some means of exchange, whether you call it money or barter (the apparent olden days). Some people will work hard and get little in return and some will not work at all, but rely on the humanity of others, and some will accumulate as much goods as they possibly can through any means they have.

Edit to add: During the great Depression, both my parents lived with their families on farms in a small town in rural Colorado. Their town and the people in it barely noticed the depression because of barter and sharing.

I do not have to. Gene Roddenberry already did.

We would still have to have some form of trade. Not all of us know how to do everything so we will have to exchange skills or items of value. This is what we call…..money.

Say we went back to the “olden days”. I’m guessing this means bartering in your mind. Say I make shoes and you make bread. You have a few freshly baked loaves of bread, and I have a brand new pair of shoes. You need a new pair of shoes, and I need some bread. We decide how much bread is fair in exchange for all the work I did on the shoes, we trade, and we go on our way. Works out pretty well, right? Well, say there’s another person in the mix. They have some shoemaking tools I need. They want some bread. I don’t have anything they need, to trade for my tools. You can’t just give them your bread, because they don’t have anything to trade for it. I need a universal token of value that I can give them in exchange for the tools, which they can then take to you and trade for the bread.

This is a simple example of why there will always be some sort of token of value in any society.

@YARNLADY, yes, that’s my point. I don’t think the OP is asking “Why can’t we get rid of cash as legal tender”? but “Why do there have to be rich and poor?” The OP seems to have a romanticized vision of life in some past time (the Stone Age, perhaps?) when survival was the only rule. That would have to be before agriculture, before mercantilism, before cities and before industrialization.

And even then, if there were communities of any kind, there were politics and the issue of control of resources. Who gets the best cut of meat, who gets the spot nearest the fire, who gets the choice women? You don’t need money to have competition and conflict.

Even the world of Star Trek failed when it imagined a world without money. Eventually, there will always be a situation that requires either trade, or a currency to facilitate trade.

@glacial There was that sci fi collections the name and author are slipping my mind.. A survival guide to the universe or bar at the end of the world or something… One of the stories was about people who somehow ended up alone together with no technology and they had to rebuild their world… After a while they decided leaves from trees were currency and everyone would be rich.. As you can imagine.. it didn’t turn out so well.

@Unbroken I assume you’re talking about the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. :)

Yup that is it…

Yup that is it… douglass adams wasn’t it?

I’m pretty close to having none right now.

@talljasperman LOL

@ragingloli I wonder how did they pay for those “Warp Coils” or build star ships without money in Gene Roddenbery’s universe? I wonder what would the unions say and what would they strike for it there were no money? I agree with @zenvelo the love of money is the root of all evil, but before money it was the love of gems and gold was the root of all evil. Before gold it was the love of your spear is the next meal. As we evolved so did our exchange system evolved, like @YARNLADY and @Jeruba pointed out. Would the world ever be peaceful without money my answer is NO! Even before money we looked for excuses to kill one another and even when there is no money like Gene Roddenbery envisioned we will still find ways to kill, steal and wage wars. Our greed and our drive to gather and compete for bigger better and more is so rooted in us that it will never be removed from our nature. I think it’s safe to say that the worship of possession is our only true religion.

@antimatter I think the assumption is that in the Star Trek version of Earth, people work on what they show an aptitude for, and somehow this translates into everything the people need being produced and delivered where required. So, it’s like communism, except that it works.

I’ve always wondered what happens in, say, cafes and restaurants (which we see on Earth occasionally) – do people just get up after their meal, say thanks to the server, then leave? If so, why do we never see that happening?

But the point I was making above is that there are many, many occasions where Federation members need something they can’t get from the usual sources, and have to barter with aliens. Sometimes, the Federation is described as using no money, but other times, there are references to currency in the form of “credits”. Often, and especially if a Ferengi is involved, humans are made fun of because their idealistic system becomes useless the minute they have to deal with another culture. But obviously, Quark charges for drinks in his bar… and Starfleet officers drink there. Who pays for that, and with what?

The writers couldn’t stay consistent, because sometimes people just needed to be able to pay for things. It’s kind of the same writing problem that exists with everyone having a replicator. So many storylines revolve around the procurement of some… thing. What, you can’t just replicate that?